T-Mobile Sidekick 4G will allow mobile hotspot, tethering

The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G was announced just a few days ago, and we’re hearing that it will be offering what most advanced Android phones do – mobile hotspot capabilities and tethering. That means you can use the Sidekick 4G to connect to the Internet by connecting your device to it via Wi-Fi or through a data cable connection.

T-Mobile will ship the Sidekick 4G with a 2GB memory card and should be expandable to 16GB or 32GB, details are scant at the moment. It does come with 1GB of data, along with Bluetooth capabilities and GPS – pretty much what we’d expect from most Android devices today.

The Sidekick is definitely a favorite of mine from a bygone era, and its resurgence fills me with mixed emotions. I loved the Danger service — well, when it didn’t crash and permanently lose user data — and the quirky operating system found on the Danger/Hiptop/Sidekick devices. The Sidekick had one of the best keyboards you could find on any phone, perhaps only slightly bested by BlackBerry, but only slightly. I also loved that it was one of the few phones that had a decent AIM client when Windows Mobile and BlackBerry had clunky, crash-prone clients.

The only reason I’m torn, and I’m sure I’ll get over it, is that this Sidekick is running Android. And it’s made by Samsung. The Sidekick of yesteryear was typically made by Sharp or, very briefly, Motorola. It also used the Danger operating system and on its fickle servers. However, if the new Sidekick 4G for T-Mobile has anything in common with the older one, it’s Andy Rubin.

Prior to joining Google and heading the Android project, Rubin was the CEO of Danger, Inc.

Either way, I’m glad to see that the smartphone that sort of defined a teen era is making a comeback, and this time with a much better ecosystem. And it will be running on T-Mobile’s super fast HSPA+ network.